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Description

A simple Raspberry Pi Zero project that reads out incoming web text messages over a speaker.
By default, it reads with a Northern accent, but there's nowt wrong with that.

Details

A couple of days before Christmas I picked up a Raspberry Pi Zero (thank you Microcenter!) and was looking for a short, get-to-know-you project that wouldn't distract from my social (drinking) obligations over the holidays.

So here's "piHole", a simple web server that accepts text messages via an HTML form and reads them out over a central speaker using "eSpeak" text-to-speech software.

Build Instructions

I'm going to assume that you have a Raspberry Pi with a working installation of Raspbian Jessie and a working network connection. Smarter people than me have written instructions for getting these things working:

If I was serious about deploying piHole on the Pi Zero I'd choose this second option. I'll have to get around to it some day anyway, but for now I have a cheap USB sound card dongle lying around (previously used with a BBB), so I'll use that.

Configuring a USB Sound Card on the Pi Zero

I'm going to assume that you're using a recent (Jessie) version of Raspbian here. If you're using an older version of Linux, you'll have to modify the file

Assuming you've got that done, and you're running Raspbian Jessie, we can

sudo nano /etc/alsa/alsa.conf

changing defaults.ctl.card and defaults.pcm.card from the default 0 to 1.

(Don't forget to backup alsa.conf before editing!)

To avoid the default card switching back to 0, I also modified the file .asoundrc in my home directory (/home/pi.).

Mine now reads

pcm.!default plughw:Set
ctl.!default plughw:Set

where "Set" is the name of my USB Sound Card: the word immediately after "card 1: " in the output from "aplay -l" above.

(You can also see your card's name by running "aplay -L", some card names are set to "Audio".)

After rebooting, we should now be good to go. Connect the headphone jack of the USB sound card to some PC speakers and enter

aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

and you should hear a young lady saying "Front Centre". If not, reboot and try again. If still not, give up. Seriously. Audio configuration is, and probably always willbe, the worst part of Linux (worse than WiFi support and suspend/resume).